


fourth time's a charm

by starvels (dinosaur)



Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, Slight Relationship Negotiation, Training, Trans Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-04 10:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13362864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Steve is distracted. Tony figures out why.-pinch hit for thestevetony secret santa





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 The first laser that clips Steve’s side, Tony laughs.

“Upgrades!” Tony calls, flipping over an array with a kick of the jetboots.

Steve mutters a curse that makes Tony laugh some more.

In the training room, it echoes, cascades like a happy backdrop to a theater of mayhem and robotic destruction.

Tony slides into a defensive stance to cover Steve as she roundhouse kicks the top off a practice dummy and they’re back it. Honey smooth and oil practiced.

The second laser, Tony glances over and Steve is laughing. A gasping sort of shocked confusion. Not pained.

“Everything hunky dory, Captain Hunky?”

Steve sort of nods and gestures Tony back into the arrays.

Tony lets it go.

She loses herself in the complexity of the training module, the twist in her gut that comes from pulling just the right amount of Gs on a good evasive maneuver. They’re working in pairs today, which Tony is always hoarding too hard to her heart. Little bittersweet pinpricks: more time with Steve, more side to side with Steve, more and ultimately none of Steve. She shakes her head to clear it.

The third laser catches Steve hard almost directly in the abs.

Tony pulls up hard and cuts off the simulation with a hard shunt through the suit controls. The faceplate pops open.

“Are you,” Tony pauses, “alright?”

Steve’s never taken more than a hit or two in practice. The upgrades aren’t all that intense. Nothing that should get Cap after the element of surprise is ruined.

“Yeah, I just.” Steve touches her side, stares down at her hand. Then looks up at Tony. She’s all sharp intensity and solid muscle. Her voice comes slowly, “This morning…”

“This morning?” Tony asks.

Steve just nods, presses her hand to her stomach and doesn’t say anything.

Tony flits her mind back through the hallway, to the elevator, to the common kitchen, to Steve at 7.15am, a tiny dusting of flour across her button down sleeve, grinning at the way Tony rolls her eyes at Steve’s bared chest.

This morning they had breakfast together. As together as their schedules allow. Tony wandered in around Steve’s third pancake and the rest of the team flickered in and out at intervals, side from Logan, snoring with his head on the dining table. Tony had three progressively colder coffees and a grapefruit and Steve’s attention.

It was calm.

Peaceful.

Nothing that would make Steve run into lasers.

“This morning?” Tony prompts again.

In the room over, Jan is cackling over the sound of Carol blowing something to smithereens and Tony takes a second to glance over and smile.

When she looks back, Steve still hasn’t said anything, is just watching. Watching Tony smile.

The blasts continue for a while.

 “I love you,” Steve says, finally.

Tony flushes a bit. The warmth of the sentiment spreads like always, melted butter into her stomach that toasts her, pastry sweet. She chides herself. She's got to not make this more, because Steve isn’t talking about romance. Steve is talking teamwork and Shellhead and hours of talking tactics and politics and homes made out of friends.

“I know,” Tony’s voice cracks a bit. She clears it. “I know you do, Steve. I love you, too.”

Steve nods, stops, shakes her head and then jerks it in some combination of the two.

“Uh?” Tony raises an eyebrow.

“No,” Steve says finally, “Not, I mean yes, but not. That.”

“ _Uh?_ ”

“Like that.”

“What?” Tony tries.

“I’m not,” Steve claws a hand through two inches of hair she has.

“Articulate?” Tony pats Steve’s arm gently. “It’s oka –“

Steve stares at Tony’s hand like she’s never seen it before. Tony’s throat goes dry. She pulls her hand away and Steve moves back from it.

The air in Tony’s lungs feels cold.

“Uh,” and Tony’s back to that, “Sorry?”

Steve never pulls away from Tony.

A gnawing of fear edges into Tony’s chest.

She starts engaging a contamination protocol with JARVIS. When Steve got hit with something – Tony doesn’t know. The last call out was a week ago. Maybe it’s a long decay. Could be time release.

Tony considers a channel to Bruce.

“No,” Steve’s watching her now, eyes wide and cheeks flushed.

“Steve, I’m all for respecting consent, but you’re probably in danger. Whatever this is, messed with your equilibrium. Three hits? And your speech skills, you don’t always gotta be Captain Inspiring Lectures A Lot, but you’r –“

“No, I’m,” Steve stutters to a stop.

Tony lets the sound of violence from the other training rooms sit for a second while Steve works her jaw back and forth.

“See?” Tony says, gentle.

“I don’t need a decom,” Steve reaches out to Tony’s armored arm. The pressure sensors register the heat of Steve’s body with a blip. The suit diagnostics autorun a comparison of her resting heartrate to file. It sends Tony a tap of confirmation: No abnormalities.

Tony resists the urge to do a full scan. Reflex algorithm is acceptable; purposeful analysis is not.

Steve’s said. Before.

“You’re acting really strange,” Tony says, slow and precise.

“I know,” Steve nods. She’s still flushed, but the armor maintains it’s not out of normal range.

Tony’s not going to just ask if something’s wrong. God, she hates when people ask that. They’re superheroes, they’ve got trauma history that could wrap around New York City. Steve’s a vet, a trans woman from the 40s, a goddamn miracle, a walking, socking pun-loving contradiction.

“You know or you know why?” she asks, instead. _Subtle_ , like.

And Steve laughs again, exhales like throwing off half a building.

“Yeah,” she says. “I know why.”

The silence draws on long enough Tony can hear a new simulation sequence start up in the adjacent rooms.

“Share with the class?” Tony taps a heel just once.

“I love you,” Steve says. Her big, gloved hands curl to hold Tony’s face in the helmet, easily wrapping around Tony and the armor, together.

Her eyes are the softest blue.

There’s got to be something wrong with her.

“Steve,” Tony says hoarsely. “I know.”

Steve is nodding, “Yeah, but -"

 _But what_ , Tony bites her tongue.

Steve catches her look and makes a sound.

“Are you still worried I’m infected with something?”

Tony gnaws at her tongue. Doesn't say anything. 

“I’ll go to medical,” Steve says softly, smoothing her hands down Tony’s arms like Tony can actually feel it. She’s the only one that treats the armor like Tony’s own body. It feels like someone picking Tony blind out of a million person crowd, every time. “I’m sorry for worrying you,” Steve continues.

“I’m not –“

“You are.”

“I am, but I’m not,” Tony flounders, tries not to move and make Steve move, “like.”

“Now who’s inarticulate,” Steve chuckles.

“Shut up, Snooty McSnoot.”

Tony resists the urge to pinch Steve’s side. She just got hit. The gauntlets would actually hurt.

“Like I said,” Steve presses her thumb to the inside of Tony’s armored elbow. The suit monitors Tony’s rising heartrate. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“Okay,” Tony croaks.

“Will you come with me?” Steve looks up at Tony from under her eyelashes and Tony curses her past self for designing a suit that makes her tall enough to see this image with her own two eyes.

“Yeah, source, absolutely. Gotta get you checked out.” Tony clamps her mouth shut.

“Mm,” Steve hums.

Without realizing it, Tony’s hands have come up to curl around the backs of Steve’s elbows. Flushing, she lets go, flushes harder when Steve smiles softly at it.

“Medical,” Tony manages.

She pings Bruce and the on-call staff and sets up contam protocol for both of them. Hopefully she’s also infected with something. Anything that would explain all of this but particularly why Steve takes her hand in the elevator and the inappropriate way Tony sorta clung to it and felt comforted.

Bruce is already in place on the 4th floor and raises an eyebrow at her when Tony and Steve toddle in.

Tony sticks her tongue out in return.

Tuning out the decom process, she thinks about where Steve could have gotten hit, why it would just now be affecting her, the shape of her strong hands. She thinks about the way Steve said _I love you_ that last time and has to take a deep breath.

“You alright?” The tech glances over.

She thinks their name is Symon, with a y.

“Yeah,” Tony croaks.

Across the way, there's a firm, doctoral "Nicely done, Captain Rogers. Now the other arm, please."

Four hours later, she and Steve are released.

Nothing, nothing, negative, slight dehydration, all clear.

It doesn’t explain anything at all.

"You still all for respecting consent?" 

“What?” Tony blinks.

“Earlier, you said it,” Steve reminds. Useless forsaken super soldier memory.

“Uh, sure.”

Steve hooks a thumb back towards the med bay, rolls back forward on the balls of her feet, “You think I can give my consent, now? Medically clear to, an' all?"

“Sure,” Tony says slowly.

Nodding, Steve moves forward fluidly.

Her impossible body heat radiates down to Tony’s knees. She has to resist the urge to reach out to check if Steve’s skin. Just to see.

“Alright,” Steve drawls, catching Tony’s wrist like she knows.

Hot, hot, hot, Tony thinks.

“Are we sure,” Tony dry-swallows, “that _I’m_ medically clear?”

“Please tell me if you aren't,” Steve murmurs. She’s drifting closer, pressing against Tony’s front in a way that sends fireworks from Tony’s tired feet to her cloudy head.

“I’m.”

The blue of Steve’s eyes is so close. She’s slightly taller than Tony now and the contrast feels _sharp_. Tony could run her tongue over it and bleed happy. Over Steve and bleed happy.

“Shellhead,” Steve murmurs.

Tony can feel her breath, smell her woodsy shampoo under the tang of practice sweat.

“Yeah?”

Steve’s other hand presses a soft, searing line to the back of Tony’s neck.

Shivers.

“Is this okay?” Steve asks.

She’s leaning in. Too close now to be anything but –

Oh.

_Oh._

“Please,” Tony whispers.

Steve kisses her.

The forth laser that hits Steve definitely hits Tony too.

It tastes like pancakes, like dark roast coffee. It feels like coming home.  

 

 


	2. prequel // epilogue

It feels like nothing.  
  
Not like emptiness or an apathy, but a simplicity, a non-realization. It feels like moving where the salt is in the kitchen and nodding in satisfaction. It feels like twisting the bandage off a knuckle abrasion and stretching new skin. It feels like uncomplicated reality.  
  
Steve is looking at Tony’s tired face and the stretched out arms of her tank top where a splotch of machine oil highlights a pure white scar line running along the bottom of her breast. A fourth pancake is ready at her elbow and Steve is about to plop a square of butter onto it’s warm center.  
  
Steve isn’t thinking anything much at all when she realizes she’s in love with Tony Stark.  
  
She doesn’t call in back-up. She doesn't lose control of a pain. She just exhales and goes to training.  
  
Except Tony upgraded the systems and Tony is her partner for the day and Tony is Tony, always.  
  
Then, she is thinking too much.  
  
Then, Tony is thinking too much.  
  
But then, then Steve isn’t thinking anything at all. Then, she is feeling.  
  
Then Steve is saying it, "I love you, Tony."  
  
And somehow, miraculously, Tony is saying it back.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! <3
> 
> tumblr post for this [[here]](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/169727067586/). to see other stevetony secret santa works go [[here]](https://stevetonysecretsanta.tumblr.com).


End file.
